Dissipative Particle Dynamics Simulations of Polymer Brushes: Comparison with Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Abstract Summary: The structure of polymer brushes is investigated by dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations that include explicit solvent particles. With an appropriate choice of the DPD interaction parameters $a_{ij}$, we obtain good agreement with previous molecular dynamics (MD) results where the good solvent behavior has been modeled by an effective Lennard–Jones potential. The present results confirm that DPD simulation techniques can be applied for large length scale simulations of polymer brushes. A relation between the different length scales $r_{\rm c}$ and $\sigma$ is established. Polymer brush at a solid–liquid interface. image Polymer brush at a solid–liquid interface.